Girl Power Girl power was coopted by the
Girl Power
• Girl power was co-opted by the mainstream and pop culture – put in the service of capitalism… therefore, drained of all of its political power and weight. • Not all bad news – some groups deploying girl power in ways that re-inscribed the term and concept with actual political power.
Discourse • “A group of statements which provide a language for talking about – ie a way of representing - a particular kind of knowledge about a topic” (69)
Question: • how can political organizations challenge the de-politicization of girl power and put it back in the service of feminist activism?
Hegemony • “a lived system of meaning and values – constituted and constituting – which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming” • Dominant, residual, emerging
Domestication/Incorporation • “At times, the oppositional culture may grow to be strong enough to actually threaten the dominant culture, and then, ‘to the extent that [these counter-cultural forces] are significant the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate them” • David Escoffery - How Real is Reality TV: Essays on Representation and Truth
Incorporation: • Process by which oppositional ideas or practices are brought back into the mainstream.
Anti-feminism: • Actively distinguishing girl power from feminism and portraying feminism badly. • Discouraging girls from feminist engagement.
Fetish of Individualism
The Culture of Late Capitalism – Paul du Guy: • “Autonomous, self-regulating and self-actualizing individual actors seeking to maximize their ‘quality’ of life – in other words, to optimize the worth of their existence to themselves – [do so] by assembling a lifestyle, or lifestyles, through personalized acts of choice in the market place. Thus, in enterprise culture, freedom and independence emanate not from civil rights but from individual choices exercised in the market”
• Girl power in postfeminist era – equates the consumption of expensive goods with equality
- Slides: 16